Telecom, Apple, AB InBev, Getty: Intellectual Property

July 11 (Bloomberg) -- Squeezed out of the mobile-phone
market by trendier offerings, Nokia Oyj, Ericsson AB and other
one-time leaders are selling chunks of their patent portfolios,
often to the litigious licensing firms the industry has derided.

The companies are being driven by their need for greater
profit, and are finding that with changing business models,
tough economics and investor pressure, there is little reason to
hold on to patents for computer memory, wireless infrastructure
and other technology that can still fetch good prices.

Ericsson, Panasonic Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. sold
almost 5,000 patents in the first quarter combined, according to
Innography Inc., an Austin, Texas-based maker of software to
analyze patent portfolios. Nokia on July 7 said it had sold a
group of phone patents to licensing company Wi-Lan Inc.

Picking up the pieces are licensing firms whose sole
mission is to buy castoff patents and then demand royalties from
other companies in a strategy to make a profit.

Skechers, based in Manhattan Beach, California, said in its
complaint that it sent a cease-and-desist notice to Fila in July
2013 and Fila agreed to quit making the offending shoe.

Fila continues to infringe the patents and trade dress
“willfully, wantonly and deliberately” and to compete
unfairly, Skechers claims.

The Skechers claim is without merit and Fila will defend
the suit, Fila spokesman Sean Lynch said in an e-mailed
statement.

The case is Skechers U.S.A. Inc. v. Fila U.S.A. Inc., 14-cv-05123, U.S. District Court, Central District of California
(Los Angeles).

For more patent news, click here.

Trademark

Apple May Fight Copycat Stores With Trademarks, EU Court Says

Apple Inc. may be able to seek a German trademark that
would stop retailers mimicking the layout of its flagship
stores, the European Union’s top court said.

Apple can try to register an image of its store layout if
it can show that it can distinguish its goods from others, the
EU Court of Justice said. Apple is challenging a refusal by the
German patent office to accept the picture as a trademark. A
national court will decide the final details of the appeal.

The Cupertino, California-based maker of iPads and iPhones
registered a U.S. three-dimensional trademark for the design of
its stores in January, according to the Los Angeles Times.

AB InBev Buys Brewer in Budweiser Rival’s Czech Home

Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, the world’s largest beer maker and
the brewer of Budweiser, bought a brewery in the hometown of
Budejovicky Budvar, a rival it has battled over trademark rights
for more than a century.

InBev bought Pivovar Samson a.s. and is considering
expanding the brewer’s Budweiser brand, the company said in a
statement without disclosing the details of the deal. Through
the takeover, InBev acquires beer production in the Czech
Republic city of Ceske Budejovice, known as Budweis in German,
which is the source of the name claimed by both it and Budvar.

Each brewer has won or lost the right in rulings in
different countries to use brands linked to the city’s name.

For more trademark news, click here.

Copyright

Getty Images Demands Fee From Blogger for Unlicensed Photo Use

A resident of a Portland, Oregon, suburb says Getty Images
Inc. is demanding that she pay a $926 fee for using a photo of
dogs on her blog, ABC television’s Portland affiliate KATU
reported on its website.

The blogger said that although she removed the image
immediately, she didn’t pay the initial demand of $480, and
Getty escalated it to $926, according to KATU.

Seattle-based Getty sent KATU a statement saying that the
blogger’s site advertises a real estate broker and needed a
license to use the image, and that the demand was increased
because the matter had to be referred to outside counsel.

For more copyright news, click here.

Trade Secrets/Industrial Espionage

Yahoo Hacks Highlight Cyber Onslaught Japan Rushing to Thwart

Shortly after the alert sounded at 9:10 p.m., Yahoo Japan
Corp.’s risk team knew it had a problem. More than 20 million
usernames and passwords belonging to its customers were being
dumped into a file, primed to be stolen.

The April 2013 breach of Yahoo Japan was an attempt to grab
the user identities of the nation’s most visited website.

Now, after a series of hacks on targets from the nation’s
space agency and its largest defense contractor to Bitcoin
exchange operator Mt. Gox, Japan’s government is set to pass a
law in fall to beef up cybersecurity in the world’s third-largest economy. Less than 25 percent of Japanese companies have
a business continuity plan in case of a cyber-attack, according
to the National Information Security Center, a government
agency.

The proposed new law would name NISC as the central
cybersecurity coordinator reporting directly to Japan’s Cabinet,
said Takuya Hirai, a lawmaker with the ruling Liberal Democratic
Party who drafted the bill.